Kautilya's Arthaśāstra, from the end of the fourth century BC, provides interesting insights into the problems of governance, accounting and control in the Mauryan society. This paper uses the extant English translations of Arthaśāstra to summarize the structure of the Mauryan economy,...

This paper has adopted the exploratory case study method of analyzing a few recent cases of public procurement irregularities on Indian Railways documented by the vigilance departments and the CAG available in public domain to inquire into the following issues: (a) how do irregularities and...

Indian Railways is one of the world's largest public sector organizations. Its network, traffic, organization and extent of vertical integration are gigantic. This paper undertakes a critical examination of its procurement process to understand the procedures and institutional mechanisms which...

Using actual voting records of simultaneous elections held for Indian federal and regional assemblies-where same political parties contest against each other in both type of elections we identify non-committed voters. These are split ticket voters who vote for different parties in two different...

The paper examines the division of tasks required between politicians and bureaucrats to run an effective rural employment guarantee scheme (EGS) in India, in the context of Indian history and habits. There are still weaknesses in the incentive structure of the new nationwide EGS. First, there...

This paper extends a two-period Overlapping Generations (OLG) model of endogenous growth in which associations between human capital, social capital, and health outcomes are critically examined for a low income country, India. If individuals with higher level of human capital can build strong...

The paper will look at the recent demonetization exercise that the government of India imposed on its people. The demonetization exercise was marketed from a Public Interest perspective as a way to eliminate corruption, increase the tax base and to fight terrorism. However, the Public Choice...

This paper aims to measure the role of police modernization scheme in its performance in crime repression. We use output distance function as an analytical tool and estimate it using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) framework in a ‘single stage’. We find that the police modernization...

Using rainfall, public relief, and election data from India, we examine how governments respond to adverse shocks and how voters react to these responses. The data show that voters punish the incumbent party for weather events beyond its control. However, fewer voters punish the ruling party...

Impact evaluations of development programmes usually focus on a comparison of participants with a control group. However, if the programme generates externalities for non-participants such an approach will capture only part of the programme’s impact. Based on a unique large-scale quantitative...